didn't think it was worth while to tell her we understood things
better nowadays, and didn't think it best to bleed as much as old Dr.
Rush recommended."

"You're like a hen with one chicken, Leslie," said the friend, still
pacing to and fro. "But seriously, I like your notion of her having
come to this of her own accord. Most of us are grown in the shapes
that society and family preference and prejudice fasten us into, and
don't find out until we are well toward middle life that we should
have done a great deal better at something else. Our vocations are
likely enough to be illy chosen, since few persons are fit to choose
them for us, and we are at the most unreasonable stage of life when we
choose them for ourselves. And what the Lord made some people for,
nobody ever can understand; some of us are for use and more are for
waste, like the flowers. I am in such a hurry to know what the next
world is like that I can hardly wait to get to it. Good heavens! we
live here in our familiar fashion, going at a jog-trot pace round our
little circles, with only a friend or two to speak with who understand
us, and a pipe and a jack-knife and a few books and some old clothes,
and please ourselves by thinking we know the universe! Not a soul of
us can tell what it is that sends word to our little fingers to move
themselves back and forward."

"We're sure of two things at any rate," said Dr. Leslie, "love to God
and love to man. And though I have lived here all my days, I have
learned some truths just as well as if I had gone about with you, or
even been to the next world and come back. I have seen too many lives
go to pieces, and too many dissatisfied faces, and I have heard too
many sorrowful confessions from these country death-beds I have
watched beside, one after another, for twenty or thirty years. And if